An example of an actual jewellery trunk show
I’ve just returned from a jewellery trunk show hosted by a long time customer of mine (over 10 years). They are the most successful and disciplined outfit in their city and surrounding area. They have 2 locations, one store is in a mall, and the other is a street boutique in a nice residential shopping district. They carry designer brands from all over Canada and the USA, as well as some Scandinavian countries. They specialize in sterling silver and focus on higher quality jewellery designs.
It was successful & they were very happy. I helped sell a lot of my jewellery pieces they already had in store, I don’t have the total amounts for those. Of the new designs that I had brought to the jewellery trunk show, we sold (retail, net of 10% discount for the event) just over $4000. I had a lot of fun and spent some time training each of the staff. This particular store does this often with different designers & has a jewellery trunk show at least once every 4 wks. They’ve created a large following over the years, and use the jewellery trunk show events to increase store traffic.
This is what happened at the jewellery trunk show
- The date for the jewellery trunk show was set over 8 wks prior to the event (Friday for the Mall, and Saturday for the street boutique location).
- The boutique operators placed a 3″x5″ picture ad in a local newspaper, printed small flyers & placed them in front the case where my designs are showcased. They did this 4 wks before the event, and emailed notices to their customer list.
- The jewellery boutique told customers about the upcoming event & introduced the flyer as customers were cashing out or leaving the store, this is in order to bring them back again soon.
- The jewellery boutique had printed a large signs for the event, they put one on a large easel for the mall location, and in the window of the street boutique. They also had the ad on a large flat screen television in the store. Their presentation was very impressive, and drew a great deal of foot traffic for the trunk show.
- I provided photographs of my jewellery designs and our company logo.
- I brought new & different jewellery designs, some very expensive show pieces, some 14kt gold, but some I designed specifically for the show.
- I ticketed all of the jewellery with retail prices and item codes.
- I worked on selling my exclusive designs as well as my regular merchandise from the cases at the mall location, from opening until 6pm.
- The boutique provided extra staff for cashing out & to handle increased traffic created by the jewellery trunk show.
- The boutique emptied some of the showcases at the entrance of the store for me to display merchandise for the jewellery trunk show.
- I also brought some jewellery displays, these were fully utilized because I had brought more jewellery than they had room to contain.
- When new merchandise ( show merchandise ) was sold, the tickets were kept and totalled at the end of the day and I later invoiced them at wholesale. However, in one location they preferred to enter everything into their computer & printed out an extra copy of the receipt for me for each piece of show merchandise sold.
- When someone places a special order during a jewellery trunk show, they pay 50% upfront & the rest upon delivery. I always take down and staple their contact name & info to each item. The boutique also inputed the customer info into their system & generated an order which they later faxed to our office, this is their procedure. However, I found it was not necessary as I made sure to take very good notes for myself.
- During the jewellery trunk show I tried to encourage special orders and ad-ons. As a perk for customers to attend these “meet the designer” types of events I’m willing to make things no one else has.
- The boutique’s policy on jewellery trunk shows is to give 10% off of that designer’s merchandise that day only, and the boutique absorbs this discount this fully. This means I invoiced the boutique at regular wholesale prices which is 50% of the retail price, before the 10% jewellery trunk show discount.
For more information on What are Trunk Shows and Their Benefits.
For more about the Do’s and Don’ts of Trunk Shows.
For more about Trunk Shows – Other Practices
